


only the sweetest words remain

by obsessivelymoody



Series: phan bingo 2018 [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Fae & Fairies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 07:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16425047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivelymoody/pseuds/obsessivelymoody
Summary: Dan should have realised he was making a mistake when he deliberately veered off path during his morning jog.





	only the sweetest words remain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for phandomficfests bingo fest for the prompt "accidental marriage".

Dan should have realised he was making a mistake when he deliberately veered off path during his morning jog. But maybe the mistake was switching from his usual path in the first place, or perhaps deciding to take up jogging that week. He should have just stuck to yoga. At least he can do that from the comfort of his own flat. 

Now, having followed the thin, almost unnaturally vibrant grassy path, Dan finds himself stuck in a small, mossy clearing, that he presumes is the end of the path. 

The sun is weird here, he thinks. He’s only been living on the Isle of Man for eight and a half months, but he’s sure that the sun shines too brightly here for just past nine in the morning in the middle of the forest, and far too directly onto the mossy boulder in front of him. 

Something draws him to the boulder, though, something otherworldly tugging in his gut, nudging him closer and closer. He’s inches away when the sole of his trainer catches air instead of grass, and suddenly he’s falling. 

It’s a short fall, and a thick bed of brown moss breaks it. Fear consumes him as he looks up, seeing a sliver of sun and blue sky, a sliver of the ground he was just standing on moments ago that he thinks, as he clutches the circular wall around him for a rope or vine or ladder, is completely unattainable. 

“Oh fuck, oh fuck fuck fuck,” He whispers to himself. It echos off the walls, bouncing away to his left. He turns, suddenly aware of the faint sound of music. 

There’s a tunnel. It’s pitch black where the bars of sunlight streaking in from where Dan fell end, but Dan’s sure there’s life at the end of it, or somewhere along it. The music is compelling, drawing him in like nothing else, and giving him the strangest urge to dance. 

His nana had warned him about these sort of things, tricks in the forest by beings other than human. In fact, it greatly contributed to his fear of trees and forests in the dark, something that Dan and his therapist decided he should work on a few months prior. A voice in the back of his mind tells him that this is _not_ what his therapist meant when she said starting with small steps, and that this is _exactly_ what his nana meant by her warnings, but—well, was Dan ever one to properly listen? 

His stubbornness gets the best of him, and he swallows his fear, concluding that there isn’t much else for him to do besides step into the darkness and follow the music. 

Dan doesn’t know how long he’s walking for when he reaches a white morning glory curtain and the music sounds like it’s being played right next to his ear. 

He pulls back the curtain, amazed to see festivities straight out of a fairy tale. Winged people—no, not people, fae—dance like it’s their last one. Dan’s not sure where the music is coming from as he can’t see anyone playing any instruments, but he feels a strong sense of duty to join them. 

A silver-eyed faerie winks at him, crooking a long brown finger at him, beckoning him to the dance floor. They’re beautiful, so beautiful, with delicately pointed ears and lips painted in a silver that matches their eyes. All Dan wants to do is go over there and dance for them, even though he’s not sure how. 

He almost does, if it weren’t for a pale, blue-green tinged hand snaking around his wrist. A distinctly male voice speaks quietly in his ear. 

“Do you want to die?” 

Dan jumps out of his skin, trying to pry his wrist from the fae’s grip. “What the fuck?”

“I mean, you’ll die if you dance with them. Unless that’s what you want. That was bad phrasing.”

He looks up from his wrist, anger flaring in his chest. The vitriol dies on Dan’s tongue as he looks into the very, very blue eyes of the faeries holding onto him. 

Oh. He’s gorgeous. Dan’s struck with the thought that everyone here must be gorgeous. He thinks it’s unfair. 

He’s aware his mouth is probably grossly gaping open, but he can’t really help himself. 

The faerie’s coppery wings, patterned in delicate, lacey swirls, flutter behind him. His hair is an unnatural black, piled high into a sort of quiff, and Dan wonders if fae dye their hair too as his eyes rake over pale brows. His eyes are so blue, Dan thinks he’d like to dive into them as if he were diving into the sea. His pink lips twist into a smirk when Dan reaches them, and he blushes, knowing how obvious he must be acting. 

“Would you like to go somewhere quieter?” The faerie asks. Dan nods. 

The faerie leads him through confusing, winding tunnels that seem to go on forever. Eventually, they stop, and the faerie leads him through a door Dan is sure wasn’t there when they first stopped. 

The interior is like a small, sort of like two of Dan’s university room’s put together. A double bed with a woven blue and green blanket on it takes up most of the space, followed by a wardrobe in the corner. Dan notices two doors against the far wall, and he wonders where they could go to, briefly considering opening one when the faerie makes a noise beside him. 

“Oh,” Dan says, turning to him. “Sorry.”

He looks puzzled at Dan. 

“Sorry?” 

“I mean, thank you,” Dan says. He feels drunk or high, or maybe a bit of both. “For helping me. Sorry I’m being rude.” 

“I’m Dan,” He continues, babbling now. “Er, Daniel.”

“You’re brave to be giving your name out so willingly, Daniel,” The faerie says, amused. 

Fuck. Fuck, Dan doesn’t know where his head is. It’s like all sense had gone right out the window, and now he’s just ignoring the basic rules when interacting with the fae, or really, non-humans. 

“It’s okay,” The faerie continues. “I’m called Philip, or Phil. I know mortals are fond of nicknames.”

“We—we are,” Dan says, laughing a little despite himself. 

It takes Dan a little bit to collect himself. Phil tells him it’s dangerous to be meddling with fae, and Dan tells him he fell into Faerie by accident. Phil sympathises, telling Dan that he’s not always good at picking up his feet when he walks. 

This surprises Dan. He always figured fae were naturally graceful and poised. 

They chat, and it’s kind of surreal. Dan hadn’t expected to ever have a conversation with a faerie (bless his nana’s attempts to keep him away from this business, but Dan thinks it must have only been a matter of time before he got himself into trouble), much less a faerie he somehow already feels connected to. 

Connected to in more ways than platonically—though perhaps Dan’s instant attraction to him should have tipped him off right from the start—as Dan finds his mouth around Phil’s cock. 

Much to Dan’s astonishment, faerie cocks aren’t that different from human ones, the only notable change being a pale purple head, with everything else a similar, deeper shade of purple. 

When Phil comes, he swallows, because it’s polite and he’s not entirely sure of the etiquette here. 

“I owe you,” Phil says, watching Dan wipe his mouth. “More than just safe passage out.” 

“So, you want to see me again?” Dan asks, almost unable to believe it. 

Phil nods. 

*

The second time Dan follows the path into Faerie he stays longer, for a full two human days, an entire weekend. It feels like mere hours, hours spent sweating and sucking, biting, gasping, and fucking. 

Phil comes to visit him more after his second time in Faerie. Dan expects them to just have sex—which they do, a lot—but he doesn’t expect Phil to have such a seemingly genuine interest in his life. 

He lingers at Dan’s side, watching him do boring things like hoovering or loading the dishwasher. It’s endearing, really, to watch someone be so fascinated by things Dan brushes off as menial chores he doesn’t even want to do most days. 

Dan even teaches him how to play some of his favourite games, seeing the way Phil’s eyes light up with marvel as he plays a few rounds of Mario Kart. 

It’s lovely. A kind of domestic bliss Dan wouldn’t have imagined for himself. Phil makes him happy, tells him silly jokes, knocks things off of shelves in Dan’s flat with his wings in a way Dan can only described as clumsily sweet. 

It’s all too nice, Dan thinks one day, nearly four months into almost daily visits from Phil. Something about it makes him a little uneasy, when he stops to ponder over it. What could a creature like Phil possibly want to keep Dan around for? 

He wonders why he hadn’t thought about it before, why not even the smallest hint of questioning popped into his mind. 

Later that night, as he watches Phil settle next to him in bed after sucking him off, he realises through his post-orgasm high that it’s all been far too much of a whirlwind for Dan to have had the chance to stop and think. The last four months have flown by, and Dan knows he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what happened in them besides being with Phil, watching Phil, talking to Phil, fucking Phil. Just...Phil. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Dan blurts. 

“Of course,” Phil replies, turning his head to look at Dan. 

“Why do you keep coming back to me? And why are we never together in Faerie?”

“That’s more than one question,” Phil muses. Bastard. While he can’t lie, like other faeries, he’s a master at evasion. They could go back and forth all night. 

“You’re trying to get out of answering,” Dan says.

“And?”

“Phil,” Dan says, an edge colouring his tone. “Answer my questions.” 

He huffs in annoyance, but gives in.

“I like you,” He says quietly. “And Faerie is too dangerous for you.” 

Dan’s heart flutters in his chest at the first statement, but he ignores it, pressing on about Faerie. 

“How is it dangerous? Because of the dancing thing and the eating thing? Or just because I’m human?” 

“Yes, to all,” Phil bites his lip, training his eyes on a spot over Dan’s shoulder. “They—the other faeries—wouldn’t be nice to you, or me. But they’d be worse to you.”

“How so?” Dan asks, softening his tone when he sees hurt flash in Phil’s eyes. 

“Do you really want to know?”

His voice is quiet, serious. Dan reaches out, threading his fingers through Phil’s. He hopes it’s as grounding for Phil as it is for him. 

“Yes.”

“We don’t—we don’t do stuff like this with mortals,” Phil says, looking down at their hands. “We take you as lovers, leave you with troublesome half-fae children that we take back before the age of five. We make changelings. We make you dance until you die. We force food down your throat so you’ll stay with us, serving us with tired eyes and broken brains until you die too.”

“We don’t date, or get married, or start families,” Phil’s voice gets quieter, more bitter as he continues. “We can be bound, like your concept of marriage, but it’s less of a mutual partnership and more of an unspoken oath of eternal servitude, as no faerie would equate a mortal life to their own, not a respectable one, even if the terms of the oath would permit it.”

“They would wonder,” Phil flips Dan’s hand over, detangling their fingers and tracing over the lines in his palm. “Wonder why I haven’t captured you, made you mine and only mine to use. Why I haven’t taken your free will as a mortal, why I haven’t taken you to a dance.”

“They’ve already noticed that I let you bed me twice in our realm,” Dan thinks he sounds sad now. “They know I’m more unconventional than the rest, and they’re not wrong to have their suspicions about us.”

When Phil doesn’t show signs of continuing, Dan speaks in a small voice, asking a question that makes fear and guilt spike in his chest. 

“What would happen to you?”

Phil regards him for a moment. It feels infinite to Dan, but he knows it was only a few seconds. 

“Exile. Death. Torture.”

Regret washes over Dan. “Oh.”

“Dan I—Dan, you’re so unlike anything else I’ve encountered in over 300 years,” Phl clasps their hands together again. “But I let myself fall too deeply for you.” 

He wants to pretend that it doesn’t feel like a punch to his chest, that his mind isn’t conjuring up giddy fantasies of a life they’ll never have together, and that his stomach isn’t swirling uncomfortably from Phil’s phrasing. He wants to pretend that it’s all fine and that he’s fine, and that he can bring himself to tell Phil he thinks he might love him, despite everything trying to hold them back from each other. But he can’t. 

“I’m sorry I asked,” Dan says instead. 

“I think it’s only fair if you know,” Phil replies tightly. 

It doesn’t feel right, to have Phil’s hand in his own, to have listened to everything Phil said, only to lay cowardly beside him, pretending that his feelings don’t exist when Phil’s in pain beside him. 

“I like you too,” Dan says, shutting his eyes and summoning up as much courage as he can muster. “I like you a lot.”

There’s a cool hand on his cheek, and Dan opens his eyes. Phil has a small smile on his face. 

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes,” Dan says. 

“If the world were better,” Phil says, lightly stroking his thumb over Dan’s cheek. “I’d be happier to hear that.” 

It breaks Dan’s heart. 

“We could—” Dan says, words catching in his throat. He feels hot tears prick behind his eyes. “Couldn’t we do something about it? Run away?” 

His suggestion sounds ridiculous in his own ears. This isn’t a movie or some book. He can’t just run away, neither of them can. They’re stuck in this mess, and Dan’s not sure if it can end happily. 

“If the world were better,” Phil repeats gently. “We could be bound, equals in every sense. Being bound isn’t bad, not for fae or for mortals. The expectations make it bad. The Court laws twist it beyond recognition. The laws make it forced for mortals, outside of your freedom. They make it something tainted, something dirty. If we were to be equals we’d have to exist in hiding.”

“Oh.” 

Dan doesn’t know what else to say, and is grateful when Phil leans forward, kissing him softly. 

“I am sorry,” Phil says, leaning away. 

“It’s alright,” Dan says, even though it isn’t, even though he wants to do nothing but pull the covers over his head and cry. Instead, he bites his lip, a proposition on the tip of his tongue. 

“Can I ask you another question?”

“Yes, I think so,” Phil says. 

“Can we pretend? Pretend like everything is fine, pretend like we’re building the rest of _us_ together?”

Phil looks sad again when he replies. 

“I thought we already were.” 

*

A few weeks pass after their conversation, and they feel normal. More than normal, really. Somehow it’s easier to be with Phil, knowing how he feels. (Even if the pain becomes too much to bear sometimes. At least they’re by each other’s sides.) 

But eventually, something goes wrong, and Dan finds himself wondering why it’s been three days since he’s seen Phil. 

He can’t text him or call him, or even write him a damn letter. He feels stuck in some kind of limbo, and he doesn’t like the way it’s affecting him. 

Phil’s the only thing on his mind when he gets up, showers, goes to work, exercises, sees his therapist. 

Dan hates the way panic floods his thoughts when a week passes without a visit from Phil. And then another. 

Halfway through the third week without Phil, Dan heads back into the forest. It’s stupid and dangerous, but he can’t help himself. 

It’s obsession, pure obsession that he can’t control because being with Phil is like an addiction that Dan’s been weaning off of for too long now. Maybe that’s love, but he doesn’t think so. He thinks it’s stronger than that, more manic. 

Rationally, he knows that there must be a good reason why Phil hasn’t come to see him in so long. But thoughts of him exiled or punished—or even dead—flood his thoughts, keeping him awake at all hours. 

He rushes through the forest, nearly missing the path in his precipitancy. When he reaches the end, he notices that the opening to Faerie is sealed, a mess of grass and knobby roots. 

He’ll wait, he decides, taking a seat on a large rock. Wait for what exactly, Phil or the entrance to open, he doesn’t know. 

But he’ll wait. 

Dan looks around, noticing patches of forget me nots and baby’s breath amongst the grass and moss. He doesn’t fully register in Dan’s mind that Manx Novembers don’t allow for these kind of flowers to grow in the wild, or for the sun to shine as bright and warm as it does. No, he carries on, delicately picking flowers from around the clearing, gathering them on a smaller rock near the one he was sitting on. 

He’s not sure what’s exactly compelling him to do this, but the feeling in his gut is familiar. It’s a tugging, drawing him in and keeping him here. As he sorts the flowers, he thinks that he felt the same feeling the first time he was here, like some force beyond his comprehension is pulling him to this.

It can’t be that harmful, he tells himself. Not as long as he’s just picking flowers and arranging them into crowns. 

He’s finished, admiring his work on the two crowns before him when the trees rustle, and then a familiar yelp. 

Dan twists to see Phil, regaining his balance as he emerges from the trees. Dan feels relief wash over him. Tension leaves his shoulders as Phil straightens, seemingly fine and, most importantly, alive. His eyes widen when he looks up and notices Dan. 

“Dan?” 

“Phil,” Dan says as he approaches. “You’re alright.”

“I am,” Phil replies. “Why are you here?” 

Dan lets out a laugh. It echos awkwardly through the woods, and sounds hollow in his own ears. 

He’s not sure why he did that. The tugging in his stomach grows stronger, and Dan tries to shake the feeling. 

“Why do you think I’m here?” 

Phil ponders this for a moment. “How long has it been, since we last met?” 

“Three weeks.”

“I lost track of time,” Phil says, dropping his face into his hands. “I only meant to be gone for a week, at most—”

“I don’t care,” Dan says. His words surprise himself. Deep down he knows he wouldn’t actually choose those to say. 

“Can you kiss me?” Dan asks. 

“Kiss you?” Phil sounds bewildered. Dan feels bewildered, but he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the pull in his gut, now steadily growing stronger. 

“Yeah, please,” Dan pats the space in front of him on the rock. Brows furrowed in confusion, Phil sits across from him, mirroring his cross-legged position. 

“Is that why you missed me?” Phil murmurs as he leans forward, pressing his lips to Dan’s. 

Dan grabs the crowns, ignoring the almost painful intensity of the pull in his gut, placing them a little awkwardly on both of their heads. He throws an arm around Phil’s neck, deepening the kiss. He gasps against Phil’s mouth when the tugging leaves him, quick and sharp. His mind slows for a moment, trying to understand where he is, and why he’s doing what he’s doing. 

His head spins, and there’s a white hot feeling in his chest that passes just as quickly as it comes. Phil stops kissing him. 

“Oh Dan,” Phil whispers, pulling away. “What have you done?”

“What have I done?” He whispers back, confused. 

“Look at us,” Phil gestures to their intertwined fingers and then to where their knees touch. 

Thin, golden strands of light loop around where their bodies meet, flickering as they circle over them. It reminds Dan of the animated models of atoms they would show in secondary school science classes, where their bodies are the nucleus and the light strands are the electrons circling it. 

It’s mesmerising, in a twisted way that he doesn’t quite understand, but Dan can barely tear his gaze away, can barely hear Phil whisper back to him. 

“We’re bound.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the weirdest thing I've ever written. 
> 
> Title is from "Turning Page" by Sleeping At Last. 
> 
> You can like/reblog this on [tumblr](https://obsessivelymoody.tumblr.com/post/179477506187/only-the-sweetest-words-remain-rating-t-word) if you want


End file.
